Office Depot, Staples battle for market dominance.Office equipment suppliers see enormous potential here Competition is fierce between the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked companies on this week's List, although there is still room for growth in the Southland south·land or South·land n. A region in the south of a country or an area. south  land·er n.Noun 1. office supply retailers market, sources say. Delray Beach Delray Beach, resort city (1990 pop. 47,181), Palm Beach co., SE Fla., on the Atlantic coast; settled 1895, inc. 1911. Mostly residential, Delray Beach is also the trade center for a citrus-fruit and vegetable-growing region. , Fla.-based Office Depot Office Depot (NYSE: ODP) is one of the world's leading suppliers of office products and services. The Company's selection of brand name office supplies includes business machines, computers, computer software and office furniture, while its business services encompass copying, ranks No. 1 on The List of the 25 largest office equipment and supply retailers and Framingham, Mass.-based Staples Inc. comes in at No. 2. "It's a war," said Staples Director of Marketing Stuart Broadhead. Each is trying to capture more market share than the other by opening more stores here, he said. Office Depot operates 22 stores in L.A. County with 1,000 employees, and Staples operates 29 stores with a total of 480 employees. Office Depot has more employees because it has a bigger staff at each of its stores, noted Office Depot District Manager Bill Wright. But Broadhead said Staples stores each have 30 to 35 employees and the Office Depot outlets don't have many more than that. Wright added that Office Depot's outlets are slightly larger than Staples', averaging 25,000 square feet in comparison with Staples' 20,000- or 22,000-square-foot stores. Room to grow Office Depot and Staples are the only two large competitors in the L.A. County office supply retail market, and the two have not yet saturated it, Wright said. "I think there are some enormous growth prospects in L.A. County," Wright said. He noted that Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. has the highest concentration of businesses in the nation outside of New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . In an effort to meet this growth potential, Office Depot has opened four stores so far this year in L.A. County and plans to open four more by year-end. Plans for 1995 include opening five to 10 new stores, depending upon space available, Wright said. Staples "is still looking in several other locations in L.A.," Broadhead added. Meanwhile, No. 3-ranked Viking Office Products retails everything "from pencils to desks" via catalog catalog, descriptive list, on cards or in a book, of the contents of a library. Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh was cataloged on shelves of slate. The first known subject catalog was compiled by Callimachus at the Alexandrian Library in the 3d cent. B.C. . Although it is in its own niche, Viking competes with superstores This is a list of superstores by country. Multi-national
Expanding abroad Los Angeles-based Viking expanded its sales this year into Australia, Ireland, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. Previously, the company's only international sales were to customers in England and France, Kroll said. The company expanded into these markets because there are so few other office supply catalog retailers there, Kroll said. Here in the U.S., Viking effectively competes with the superstores by trying to offer better service, he said. It provides same-day delivery in several regions of the country. Also, customers have 30 days to pay Viking for their purchases, and Viking will pick up for free any items customers want returned, he said. Looking at the used office furniture market, the business of helping companies "reuse reuse - Using code developed for one application program in another application. Traditionally achieved using program libraries. Object-oriented programming offers reusability of code via its techniques of inheritance and genericity. " their furniture has grown by 30 percent every year for the past five years at No. 7-ranked Unisource Office Services, said President Ken Kastner. City of Commerce-based Unisource helps companies reuse their furniture by adapting it for a different size office or an alternative use, Kastner explained. Downsizing (1) Converting mainframe and mini-based systems to client/server LANs. (2) To reduce equipment and associated costs by switching to a less-expensive system. (jargon) downsizing hikes sales Business in this area has been growing because companies continue to downsize Downsize Reducing the size of a company by eliminating workers and/or divisions within the company. Notes: When a company downsizes, it is attempting to find ways to improve efficiency and increase profitability. It is sometimes referred to as trimming the fat. . They may consolidate their offices and need to reconfigure their furniture appropriately, he said. About 75 percent of Unisource's business comes from helping companies reuse their furniture. The rest comes from the sale of new furniture and has increased about 30 percent this year so far in comparison with 1993, Kastner said. El Monte-based A.B.E. Corp., ranked No. 10, has doubled its sales since 1992 by selling used office furniture, said President Robert Ray Robert Ray may refer to:
A.B.E. buys used office furniture from aerospace companies, banks and other large corporations that are downsizing and resells it in its 40,000-square-foot showroom. "Many people today are beginning to understand that recycled or refurbished furniture is the way to go," Ray said. A.B.E. sells the used furniture to companies of all sizes, from the entrepreneur who is just starting out to major corporations, he said. |
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